Clockwise from upper left: Prager, Hewitt, Medved, Coleman, Bachmann, Paulsen

Clockwise from upper left: Prager, Hewitt, Medved, Paulsen, Bachmann, Coleman

The so-called “Three Tenors” of talk radio — conservatives Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager — spoke before a crowd of 3,000 at Minneapolis’ Orchestra Hall in an event attended by Republican candidates Michele Bachmann, Norm Coleman and Erik Paulsen, as well as Gov. Tim Pawlenty. While the speakers hold hardline conservative views — Prager sparked outrage in 2006 by stating that by being sworn in on a copy of the Qu’ran, Rep. Keith Ellison would “embolden Islamic extremists,” and by telling Ellison he shouldn’t serve in Congress if he’s “incapable of taking an oath on” the Bible — Coleman and Paulsen have been veering to the center in hopes of eking out wins on Nov. 4.

The speakers heaped praise on GOP candidates and lashed out at Democrats. While Medved said that “there is no finer senator than Norm Coleman,” he called Al Franken an “emotionally disturbed … liar … lowlife … leftist,” a “disgrace to your state” and the “most despicable and disgraceful candidate ever nominated by a major party for the United States Senate anywhere.” He compared Franken to onetime GOP candidate and neo-Nazi David Duke and called Franken “trash on the ballot.”

Prager, mentioning “Minnesota Nice,” hailed Coleman and joked about the Star Tribune’s endorsement of the senator: The Strib endorsing Coleman is “like Pravda endorsing Eisenhower,” he said.

Bachmann took the mic briefly, thanking the audience, mainly listeners to the AM station The Patriot, “for watching my back this last week” — during national blowback over her comments that she fears Barack Obama and others in Congress hold “anti-American views.”

Prager, who calls Bachmann a “wonderful, wonderful extraordinary human being,” addressed the brouhaha by telling how he would’ve dealt with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews — by asking Matthews if he believes there are “American values” in the first place; if Matthews agrees, then “logic 1.1″ dictates that some people must hold anti-American values.

He added that both parties once upheld the “American value system” — the Democrats in the era of Kennedy and Truman — but the “Sixties Generation, the radicals, have taken over one of our two parties. They must be stopped!” People who “vote blue,” he added, “don’t know they’re voting radical.”

No fan of the Enlightenment, Prager added, “Equality, which is the primary value of the left, is a European value, not an American value.”

Prager’s most fiery rhetoric was against Obama’s message of change. “The left has built up a caricature of the United States over the last six years … a grand edifice of lies about America — about how pernicious it is … how fascistic it is. … [The left] believes ‘Bush lied, people died.’ These are all untruths. … Bush did not lie. This must be said over and over and over. … They may have been mistaken, but they didn’t lie.”

Watch Prager’s presentation: